Talk:Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe

"Absurdist critics" claim

Under Reception, there is the following:

He [Levitt] failed to acknowledge that White was actually a harsh critic of postmodernism, referring to Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida as the "absurdist critics".

This is a misreading. "Absurdist critics" is meant as a description, not as "harsh criticism". In particular, the essay on Foucault cited in the footnote is sympathetic towards Foucault's thesis (principally as found in The Order of Things): "In my view, the principal contention of Les Mots et les hoses is correct and illuminating" (p251). White does however seek to go beyond Foucault's position, to interpret Foucault in spite of Foucault.

Merge

It is certainly true that many notable books have their own page, but this is only necessary when there is so much information that the author's own page would become cluttered. In this instance, I was able to merge the entire content of this article into the article on Hayden White without any appreciable cluttering of that article. If the information on the book becomes so long that it takes over the other article, this article can certainly be restored, but as of now it is simply not needed. Indrian 19:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Article length has nothing to do with merger, just because you physically can fit it into the article doesn't mean it should be merged. Also how much do you know about the subject (Hayden White and metahistory?). Please follow up at Talk:Hayden White as that's where the proposed merge tags point for discussion. -- Stbalbach 20:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

The link to the page at Stanford is dead -- is there an updated one?

Expand to describe the different archetypes

It would be valuable to know what are the different archetypes of historians that this book believes exist. --64.230.121.26 17:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Removed dubious item

"The term Meta-History was defined by the black philosopher Dr William F Fearon." The need for such a tag is rather obvious but I doubt the relevance of any citation in the case. White pointedly says what he will consider as 'metahistory'.Ael 2 (talk) 21:45, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

John W. Yolton has published a paper History and Meta-History in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Jun., 1955), pp. 477-492 ; the French version of the page is about metahistory as a term and it is mentioned there that the word has been used byCharles Peguy in 1910. All this in case somebody thinks about writing an article about the idea, not just about White's book.91.92.179.172 (talk) 09:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

"Greatest Generation" of scholars

By 2015, as Foucault and Derrida fade, White's seminal work benefits from the general revival of interest in what we might whimsically call the Greatest Generation of American liberal arts criticism-- if only, alas, because STEM has gobbled up all the funding and students. One is as likely to see an essay about Trilling on Arts and Letters Daily these days as one about Derrida. It's an old pattern in American criticism-- flirting defiantly with the continent-- getting bored with the French mind-- coming home to one's roots. Profhum (talk) 18:23, 6 October 2015 (UTC)